Strengthening Interdisciplinary Research: What it is, what it does, how it does it and how it is supported

he Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) recognises that there are considerable benefits in encouraging interdisciplinary research, particularly where the objective of the research is to achieve useful economic, social, environmental or cultural outcomes. The real world does not always present its problemsand opportunities conveniently aligned with traditional academic disciplines so mechanisms are needed to facilitate interactions and collaborations between researchers working in widely different fields. To better understand the issues involved ACOLA undertook the first stage of a project, Making Interdisciplinary Research Work Achieving a Sustainable Australia, funded by an ARC Learned Academies Special Projects (LASP) grant, which examined the current situation. This culminated in the present report, Strengthening Interdisciplinary Research: What it is, what it does, how it does it and how it is supported, prepared by Professor Gabriele Bammer from The Australian National University. Although further work will be done to build on this first phase of the project, ACOLA believes a number of preliminary observations can be drawn from the work done to date, which will hopefully be able to be verified and refined as the project continues. Firm conclusions are difficult at this stage as data do not exist.